Morton High School’s Lady Potters 62, Peoria Manual 31.

What the Potters did tonight is what good teams are supposed to do to bad teams. They made them look worse.

For the 15th time in a row, the Potters have won a state tournament game, this one their regional opener. “Everybody got their feet wet,” Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach, said. To win the Class 3A state championship for a third straight season – only the second three-peat in Illinois history – Becker’s team now has to win six more games, one in the regional, two in the sectional, one in the super-sectional, and two at Redbird Arena.

I’ll give you more about the game in a minute. First I want to talk about a picture. I’m not a photographer. But when there’s a picture that demands to be taken, my magic iPhone gets the job done. So I asked Brooke Bisping, the Morton assistant coach, to stay a minute after the game. Then I asked her sister, the senior star, Brandi, “Do me a favor?” To complete the portrait, I put the sisters on either side of Cindy Bumgarner. We should call the picture, “Potters History.” Do the math. In their 12 seasons, the Bispings and Bumgarner have scored 5,747 points and taken 2,857 rebounds (with Brandi still chipping in).

You know the Bispings. But Bumgarner?

Maybe all you need to know about Bumgarner is what Jane Miller Sands said tonight. Jane was a Peoria Journal Star sportswriter for approximately forever until she ran off to marry a Texan four years ago. In her sportswriting days, Jane saw lots of games at the Potterdome. So tonight, serendipity at work, a coincidence of travel plans brought Jane and Bumgarner together at the Potters regional tournament opener. And here’s what Jane said on first spotting the hero she had written so much about: “Cindy! My goodness! Cindy!”

Jane’s enthusiasm was born of more than a chance meeting after all these years. It also was also a measure of what she thought of Bumgarner, the player. Perhaps the best of all Potters, Bumgarner was a 6-foot-2 perimeter player who could work inside. In four seasons, she averaged a double-double. As a senior in 1984, she scored 24.4 points a game, still the program record. Later an All-American at Indiana University, Bumgarner is now an assistant vice chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Anyone who goes to a Potters’ game sees Cindy’s father, John, and mother, Karin, always at midcourt opposite the Potters’ bench. I’ve seen them there for seven seasons now. They were joined tonight by Cindy, who had come to the heartland for a reunion of her Indiana team. I was happy to meet her – so happy, in fact, that I put her to work. “After the game,” I said, “I’ll be back for a comment from you.”

I figured I’d need help because, truth to tell, one’s imagination has limits. The Potters are 28-2 this season and they’re 94-8 over the last three seasons. How many ways can a sportswriter avoid long dissertations on yet another victory achieved by the superior team playing well? Many a night I have disgressed, delayed, and put off game accounts. I have riffed on pep bands that murder music. I have questioned the eyesight of men in zebra shirts. I have suggested that the entire city of Dunlap up and moves to a new location every winter, the better to keep me lost in the dark wilds of Route 91.

I knew I’d need help tonight. I watched Peoria Manual warm up. They had some big players. By big I mean big. One big came decorated with tattoos. I noticed they moved their bigness without grace, elegance, or quickness. Those kind of bigs are not bigs the Potters much worry much about. The Potters are not big and they move with grace, elegance, and quickness. But I didn’t want to define in painful detail the many ways in which Peoria Manual might be better off playing Parchesi. So I asked Cindy to be ready to save me.

This was another game in which it was only a matter of time. That’s because Morton has a lot of basketball players and Manual doesn’t. A 17-2 run gave the Potters a 25-10 lead late in the first half. A 14-1 run gave them a 50-22 lead early in the fourth quarter. Those two runs – 31-3 in about a quarter’s worth of game clock – were demonstration of Morton’s dominance built on relentless effort at both ends by a team that goes eight players deep. Not only did the Potters’ pressing, trapping defense discombobulate Manual all night long, Morton scored from sets, on the run, and seven times on 3-pointers.

Tenley Dowell led the Potters’ scoring with 16. Bisping had 12. (Her 8 rebounds moved her career total to 1,040, now 7 behind Bumgarner’s record). Courtney Jones scored 9, Josi Becker 8, Jacey Wharram 4, Caylie Jones 4, Lindsey Dullard 4, Kassidy Shurman 3, and Maddy Becker 2.

So, Cindy Bumgarner, one of the all-time best Potters, how’d today’s Potters look to you?

“They played hard all night, they didn’t lose a step when new players came in, they moved the ball well,” she said. “They were a TEAM.”